One of the unique abilities for the Mongols is that they’re able to pack up their buildings and relocate their base.
I always found this mechanic great on paper, but peculiar and underused in RTS match-ups as the cons tend to outweigh the pros:
relocating allows you to move near rare resources or a vantage point that’s easier to defend
it also allows you to move next to, or inside your ally’s base if you do it early enough, but your resource gatherers will remain exposed to raiding parties and your tech could fall behind depending on travel distance
players can move military buildings close to an enemy base for sneak attacks, though sometimes it’s safer to build on the spot unless mobile buildings can defend themselves
if the enemy player is constantly scouting your base, he/she can catch you with your pants down i.e. when your base is mobile and your economy is stagnating
you’re unable to train troops or research while the base is mobile; resource collection is also limited
most RTS games don’t allow you to pack up all of the buildings, you have to leave some behind (resulting in loss of resources and rebuilding time) - this seems to be the case for AoE4 as well:
in the below screenshot you can see a drop-off point and tower that couldn’t be disassembled
True, the map size for the Mongol civ play needs to be super big to really feel the difference. About the outpost, it is there to spot incoming or potential enemies. About that yurt I don’t know why they didn’t pack but it makes sense.
The Mongol outposts are supposed to speed up their units, so I’m not sure that it is a disadvantage to have to leave them behind, if that is the case. I think the idea is that, as the game progresses and they develop a network of outposts, the Mongols will be able to use hit and run tactics pretty much everywhere. The line of sight would help, too, enabling the Mongols to always strike where their opponents are weakest. It could be extremely difficult to deal with their aggression.
You make really good points, though. I’m really looking forward to trying out (and playing against) this civilization in particular, so I hope that moving is sufficiently incentivized. I think it will depend on how strong their alternative uses for stone are. Hopefully, those benefits strongly outweigh the cost of moving, so the question is no longer whether or not to move, but which new stone pile makes the most strategic sense to relocate to.
I’m coh1-2 OKW can put some trucks ( building) outside base third one hace a defensive cannon and it works pretty well, for this to work maps you be big for 1v1 2v2
Now that I think of it. it’s a bit silly to have the Mongols slap a cart and go “this baby can fit so many stone monuments in it” yet are unable disassemble ovoos, towers nor can they carry around logs for pallisades. I wonder if the giant equestrian statues and the Buddhist stone stupas are packable as well.
I just hope the maps are large and expansive otherwise I’d imagine they’d hampered or downright suacidal on certain maps unless they can build wooden wall at least.
It will be interesting to see if they can build walls. We have not seen any, but building walls means one wants a permanent base.
It still may be helpful to save resources to move drop points, or to inch up FB as one takes some ground. Or relocate the town center to be closer to resources… it has some appeal.
I like that this nomadic gameplay style suits the historical Mongols a lot more than standard AoE gameplay. Was annoyed that they had to play as a sedentary civ in AoE2, building houses and so forth, which only the Huns were exempt from. The base relocation feature reminds me of Terrans in Starcraft 2, which certainly had its drawbacks in competitive games but certainly made for good flavor. As long as Mongols aren’t necessarily required to relocate, I think it’ll be okay if the feature doesn’t see much use in competitive play for the reasons you outlined. I’d like to see it as an unusual trick you can pull out once in a while: the opponent is getting sloppy, relying on outdated scouting info, they go to rush your base, and discover you’re already gone! Hopefully with all the resources used up, so the area is no longer useful to them.
the map size for the Mongol civ play needs to be super big to really feel the difference
Like SubotaiMGL said, we’ll need some big map sizes for features like this to be worth it. Spirit of the Law also mentioned that the Chinese will need big map sizes to fully take advantage of their landmark buildings, so hopefully larger maps will be the norm in AoE4 compared to previous titles. I think the machines most strategy gamers use today will be able to handle it, but of course that depends on how well-optimized the rest of the game is.
I think that they’ll have specific mechanics, like ovoo depleting, that would force them to move bases.
Yeh in other RTSs the ability to move bases never really works out, as fully halting your progression for a time would require a massive and hard to balance reward for it to be worth it.
However if you’re forced to always move bases with this civ, then that guaranteed pause makes balancing the progression much more straight forward. And given the decision to move bases is already made, many actually interesting choices open up like where to move bases and the skills of doing it efficiently.
That’s interesting to know, I wasn’t aware of outposts boosting Mongol units.
Guess it’ll be a toss up between spreading yourself too thin, or total map control if your APM is high enough (similar to the Zerg in Starcraft).
Especially if other civs actively trying to set their outposts on fire - which seems to be another new mechanic.
It didn’t look like they had access to walls, perhaps due to how they’ll utilise stone. Maybe only to build outposts then move on?
I agree with everyone’s comments, they’ll need clear advantages to offset the economic stagnation while moving their bases.
My source for their outposts providing a speed boost is the civilization description on this page. There are summaries for all four of the confirmed civilizations, and I’d definitely check them out, if you haven’t already.
As far as alternative uses for stone go, the same description says that their stone mining structure allows a player “to rapidly produce units or improve their research”, which is quite vague. However, I suspect that the rapid unit production is intended to offset the economic stagnation we’ve discussed.
I could see Mongol vs English matchups being really interesting. The Mongols would probably gain map control very quickly, while the English would initially be confined to a small, strongly fortified region. As the game progresses, the English could slowly cement their hold over new territories, essentially putting the Mongol player on a timer to strike a killing blow. If the English player covers the map with castles, it won’t matter if the Mongols are more mobile, since there would be nowhere to go.
I’m not sure how I feel about mirror matchups, though. The dynamic between two defensive civilizations, for instance, is slightly less exciting to me than matchups where there are clearly different civilization-dependent strategies for the contenders. I guess I’ll just have to be patient, though, and see how it plays
Mongols vs English will be similar to a Zerg vs Protoss match-up
I should think stone will act as a faster research / recruit button, so you burn it up to get ahead in tech and units, then move your base to the next stone mine. If you do it in the right rhythm you could not only keep up with the enemy, but outperform them. Especially if you overextend and your opponent is complacent.
I’ll have a look at the website, thank you for pointing that out to me.
